


Light Shows and Animal Instincts

by camichats



Series: Imagine James and Sirius Prompts [23]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Marauders' Era, Oblivious James, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 23:27:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12543656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camichats/pseuds/camichats
Summary: Sirius tells James that he fancies him. ...and James doesn't realise it. A year later, he doesn't know why Sirius gets mad at him so easily.





	Light Shows and Animal Instincts

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: “Hi, so im not sure im doing this askk/prompt thing right but im going to give it a shot because i love your works so so much. So could you please write superhero school AU about their (James/sirius) first kiss? So like lots of mutual pining,tiny angst and fluffy end? That would be super cool to see. Im not sure what kind of superpowers they would have or how it would work but i imagine something like the x-men school, or BNHA. But if thats not your thing thats totaly okay :)”
> 
> I think this is the first time I’ve written promiscuous James without a Sirius to match, which feels kinda weird. This was fun :D Though I do think it might have a little more angst than you asked for…
> 
> Originally posted on [tumblr](https://imaginejamesandsirius.tumblr.com/post/166898660450/hi-so-im-not-sure-im-doing-this-askkprompt-thing)

“What the fuck is this?”

“What?” James asked, looking up from his football magazine.

Sirius was holding aloft a pair of pink lace knickers from the tip of his wand-- _It’s not a wand, James, it’s a stick._ **_Yeah that you use to channel energy, Pads, it’s a wand_** \-- wrinkling his nose at them before glaring at James. “You said you wouldn’t bring birds back here anymore.”

“No,” James corrected, “I said I wouldn’t bring birds back here while _you_ were here anymore.”

“That’s not what we agreed.”

“Yes it is.”

“Not it’s not.”

“Yes it is.”

Sirius rolled his eyes and flicked the knickers at him, landing them on James’s leg when he didn’t move. “Well don’t let them leave their bloody underthings here, it’s disgusting.” He frowned, looking at the area of the room where he’d found them. “Wait a tic, why were they over _here_?”

They were over there because previously they’d been in James’s bed, but he didn’t know that until he was trying to sleep and rolled onto them. In his tired and annoyed state, he hadn’t thought about what it was or that Sirius would find it, he just grabbed the offending item and chucked it away from himself, and promptly forgotten about it until right now.

Instead of saying any of that, he shrugged. “How should I know? Alice is into a weird sort, everyone ones that.”

“Yeah I don’t think Alice would leave her unwashed knickers by my dresser, she likes me better than that.”

James raised an eyebrow, more committed to the lie now that Sirius didn’t believe him. “Are you sure?”

Sirius rolled his eyes again, but not playfully, more like he was actually upset. “Well when you bugger people in the future do it in _their_ damn room.”

“I-- okay. Sorry.”

Sirius gave a tense thank you, grabbed his bag, and left.

James sighed, his head banging against the wall behind him. He brushed Alice’s knickers off his leg absently. He and Sirius used to be close, closer than anyone, but then… he didn’t even know. They’d gotten to the age of sleeping with birds, James started to do so, asked Sirius why he wasn’t, and Sirius said he wasn’t interested in them. Sirius had looked hopeful when he told James he liked blokes, but James must have said the wrong thing because the next day there was this distance between them that hadn’t been there before, and they never recovered. He’d even tried telling Sirius that he was sorry for whatever he said, that he hadn’t meant to be a homophobic arsehole, that he would be better in the future, and that Sirius could hit him in the head any time he said something off. That just made him angry, and left James more confused than ever.

James missed him, missed him so buggering much, but he didn’t know how to fix anything between them, and he certainly didn’t know how to go about spending time together without fixing whatever he’d buggered up. Gods he missed him. It’d gotten to the point that any time he saw Sirius happy his stomach erupted in butterflies.

* * *

Sirius glared at James as if it was his fault they were stranded in the middle of whatever buggering forest with no way to contact anyone. Which was ridiculous since they both were very aware it was the fault of Peter’s as of yet fully fledged powers that sent them here. Hell, poor Pete had such little control right now they were lucky they didn’t get zapped to the middle of the ocean. All things considered, Peter was doing amazing with his powers, but that didn’t make them any less stranded.

“Do you plan these things?” Sirius asked, throwing up his hands.

James blinked in surprise. Sirius was temperamental at the best of times, but really, what the hell? “How do I have anything to do with this?”

Sirius glared at him again, then chose a direction and random and started walking, leaving James to scuttle after him.

“Sirius!” He jogged a bit to get in front of him, halting his progress-- if ‘progress’ could even be applied to this situation. “What are you so mad at me?”

He looked away and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Kinda seems like you do,” James countered.

Sirius tried to move past him, but James stopped him. He kept trying but James blocked him at every turn. Eventually, he stopped trying, and grit his teeth. “Don’t you have something better to do than make me feel like shit?”

James flinched back as if Sirius had slapped him. “What?”

Sirius squared up, settling in for a fight that, in his opinion, was long overdue, even if he had been the one avoiding it. “Alright, Mister I’m-so-much-better-than-you, you want to know why I’m upset? Because a year ago I told you I fancied you, and not only did you reject me, you pretended not to know what I was saying! And then you went on about not wanting to offend me, and _then_ you started fucking girls in our room and acting like it was no big deal!”

James wanted to say something back, had so many things he wanted to say, so many that they all jammed between his brain and his mouth and he didn’t say anything.

Sirius sneered at him. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Shouldering past James, he started storming through the forest again.

By the time James’s body woke up again, he had to run to catch up. He stopped in front of Sirius, forcing him to stop again and making him sigh aggravatedly. “You never told me you fancied me,” he claimed, but even as he said it, it felt like a lie- which, what? “You didn’t!” he defended, though Sirius had yet to react to his statement. “You said you liked blokes, and then you were looking at me like I’d done something wrong, so I apologised!”

Sirius sighed, head tilting back like he was looking to the gods for patience. “I told you I fancied you,” he grit out, “and you said ‘sorry’.” He glared at James again, but there was more hurt than anger there. “And now you’re doing shit like leaving Alice’s knickers in front of my dresser. Believe me, James, I got your answer loud and clear the first time.”

“What- that’s not- that was an accident,” he managed to get out. Sirius fancied him? _Fancies_ him?

Sirius snorted. “Sure it was. Do you think I can’t tell when you’re lying to me?”

“It _was_ an accident!” An accident he should have taken care of admittedly, but had mistakenly thought wouldn’t matter-- and also hadn’t remembered, but then if he knew it would matter, he would have remembered.

“Maybe, but you lied about it the first time.” Guiltily, James stayed silent. It had seemed like the best course of action at the time, but he wasn’t going to _say_ that. “That’s what I thought.”

A beat. “You told me you fancied blokes, not me,” he muttered, heart going the speed of light but fuck if he knew why.

“Whatever,” Sirius said, starting to walk. It felt like some convoluted emotional game of leapfrog, all this running and stopping and continuing, and the only thing they’d accomplished was getting angry with each other, which wasn’t exactly something they needed help with these days.

Although, if what Sirius said was true, and he did fancy James… then James was the massive arse here-- had been for a year-- and Sirius hadn’t done anything wrong. Shit. Fucking buggering shit. He needed to fix this, but the last time he tried to apologise to Sirius before thinking everything through, it blew up in face. And this- he didn’t know how he felt about this. He felt light in a way that had nothing to do with his powers, and his heart was still beating an irregularly loud rhythm in his chest.

Slightly ahead of him, Sirius stepped over a large log, his hand going out to touch a tree for balance and James felt a familiar spike of desire that he’d been close enough for Sirius to use him instead of the tree.

He froze, feet fumbling across a large piece of moss covered bark.

Sirius paused, glancing back. “You okay?” he asked tentatively, like he wanted to still be angry but cared more that James was okay. Merlin and Morgana, James was an idiot.

“How do you know when you fancy someone?” he blurted. That wasn’t what he meant to say, not that he knew what he _had_ meant to say.

“You- I dunno,” Sirius said, looking thrown. “You want to be around them all the time and make them happy, and hold them and stuff.”

“Eloquent,” James said automatically, but his mind was spinning. “So- er,” he swallowed, “I think I fancy you.”

Sirius’s face hardened. “That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t supposed to be. I thought- hell I thought that was just how you felt about your best mate.”

“Wait.” Sirius walked towards him. “You want to kiss me and you thought ‘oh that’s just what people want to do with their friends’?”

“No-”

“Oh right, just your _best_ friend. Did you actually think that?” he asked incredulously.

“Well it- made sense at the time,” he stuttered out as Sirius moved into his personal space.

Sirius put his hands on either side of James’s face and leaned in. “You are such a fucking idiot,” he whispered, pressing their lips together.

“Rude.”

“Oh?” Sirius said, sounding far too prepared for this vein of conversation. James kissed him again, but it didn’t dissuade him. “I’m not the one who can fly, and forgot about that so wholly that we ended up walking through the forest for an hour.”

James’s face flushed with embarrassment, and as much as he wanted to deny it, there was nothing he could say that Sirius would believe. “Well, hey, you remembered that I could fly and didn’t say anything.”

“That’s because any time I try to talk to you about something serious you run away, and I knew you wouldn’t leave me here by myself.”

“...I feel played. Did you and Peter team up?”

Sirius rolled his eyes, his arms still hanging off of James’s shoulders where he’d left his hands after kissing him. “The day me and Petey team up against you will be the day of the apocalypse, right after Remus lets loose and decides to kill us all.”

“What about me?”

“Well you’ll already be dead.” He pat James’s cheek. “Don’t take it too hard Jamsie, but Remus would wolf out and you wouldn’t even notice. First casualty of war, but don’t worry, I’ll try to avenge you.”

“Try?”

“Moony is scary when he tries, and I frighten easily.”

“You do not.”

“I could,” he argued, as if offended.

James snorted, shaking his head. “It’s like the last year didn’t happen.” Now that they were talking, they clicked back together like those crappy magnetic friendship necklaces Benjy liked so much.

“Not true. We spent that year not talking and I learned all the ways you’re a dumbarse. Leaving Alice’s knickers in front of my dresser? Really? That wasn’t on.”

“It was accident,” James whinged. “I forgot to pick them up after, I swear.”

“Yeah, don’t think I’m letting that fade into obscurity. I love you and all, but you were a giant fuckwad for a while there.”

“I know. Lots of forgiveness and penance, I’ll come prepared.”

“Good.” Sirius kissed the tip of James’s nose. “Now you wanna fly us out of here or what?”

**Author's Note:**

> This is from a prompt driven blog @[imaginejamesandsirius](https://imaginejamesandsirius.tumblr.com) on tumblr. Please send in a prompt of your own!


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